Swine flu: one dose of UK vaccine effective

One dose of the swine flu vaccine is enough to protect against the virus,
raising the prospect that the UK may be left with millions of doses of extra
jabs.

4:59PM BST 14 Sep 2009

The Government has contracts for enough swine flu vaccine for the whole population to have two doses, 130 million doses in total, but now research trials are showing the vaccine is effective after only one.

The results were released as the Department of Health announced agreement had been reached with GPs over delivering the vaccine.

Doctors will receive £5.25 for every dose of vaccine with administer which will cover the cost of contacting people in the priority groups, and providing extra immunisation clinics.

In total it will cost around £94 million to vaccinate the nine million people in the priority groups if two doses are required.

The vaccination programme is still being planned on the assumption that two doses of vaccine will be required meaning that for every fully immunised person, the GP surgery will receive £10.50.

It had been reported that the British Medical Association was asking for £7 per dose.

Health Secretary Andy Burnham said: “This is great news for patients.

"This deal represents good value for money as the vaccine programme will reduce the number of people who will need hospital treatment.”

Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s GPs Committee, said: “We are pleased we have reached a national agreement as we believe this is the best way to deliver the vaccine to the at risk population.

"This will be a lot of additional work for practices, but general practice is used to running large vaccination programmes."

The research trial results mean that initially the people in the priority groups for the H1N1 vaccine, including front line health and social care workers and pregnant women can be vaccinated faster.

After the priority groups are vaccinated, officials will decide whether to offer the vaccine to the general population.

New research released by GlaxoSmithKline, which will supply the bulk of the vaccine, has found one dose of the immunisation triggered a good immune response in trials involving 130 healthy adults in Germany. They developed immunity against the virus three weeks after the vaccine.

The data has been sent to the medicines regulators which will decide how many doses are required when the vaccine is licensed in the next few weeks.

Experts have said children may need a second dose - as they do with other vaccines - but even taking this into account the findings raise the prospect that there will be millions of doses of vaccine left over.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "Companies are starting to produce preliminary data from their H1N1 vaccine trials in a limited number of subjects.

"Initial results appear to indicate adequate immune responses from a single dose of swine flu vaccine in adults and whilst these results are encouraging, they need to be fully evaluated before definitive conclusions can be reached."

It is not clear what contractual arrangements are in place between the Government and Glaxo should fewer doses be required.

Dr Richard South, medical director of the pandemic centre of excellence at GSK, told journalists at a briefing in London that the UK Government could chose to donate any extra vaccine to other countries.

Jean Stephenne, President GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, said: "This trial provides encouraging data on the potential use of a single dose of our pandemic vaccine.

"We have shared these data with both regulatory authorities and governments who are making key decisions on urgent global public health care at this time. Our next step is to complete this trial, as well as 15 other studies in our clinical development programme for the vaccine.”

Last week, Prof Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, said Britain is “tantalisingly close” to winning the fight against swine flu and is prepared to fight a second wave of the virus.

His upper estimate of the number of potential deaths from the virus this winter has been reduced from 65,000 to 19,000.